IN WHICH I HAVE A LOVELY WALK, OH YES

Dan was feeling extremely poorly, so he decided to spend the day at home. I, on the other hand, was more than ready to go for a nice long walk. One of the circular walks in the Cotswolds guidebook provided by the cottage went close by, and was a bit over 8kms in length, so I set off by myself.



The walk was amazing – everything was covered in frost, and the heavy mist meant that visibility was poor.



However, the mist made everything look white and magical, and I realised that sometimes this makes the scenery even more beautiful – every new landmark appears out of nothing in front of you and vanishes behind you, lending an air of mystery and discovery even to the most common objects.





It also makes navigating by guidebook instructions amusing, as you can’t always see the “trees in the opposite corner” that you’re meant to head towards, and when you do, they loom up quite mencingly!





I was swaddled in numerous layers of thermal clothing and waterproofs, but after a quarter of an hour, I had to take off my jacket and hat and wipe away the sweat I’d worked up. About twenty minutes after that I touched my hair and realised that a frost was forming in it!



That was pretty much the most amazing thing that had ever happened to me, so I was glad that an old Welsh man and his dog appeared out of the mist and I could share my excitement. The dog even had frost on her ears!



About a third of the way through the walk I heard some strange swishing, crushing sounds, then a few gun shots – not too far away. Peering carefully over one of the drystone walls, I saw a few huddled figures standing at regular intervals alongside a field of dead corn waving large white, yellow and orange flags.



At first I didn’t quite understand what was going on, but I bumped into a couple of fellow walkers (from Leicester) who explained that it was a pheasant shoot: a number of beaters walked through the corn, herding the (somewhat farmed) pheasants towards the shooters, the pheasants would run until they had no room left and then take flight, and the people with flags would try to ensure the pheasants would fly in the direction of the guns. The pheasants weren’t all that stupid, however, and we saw quite a few take off in the wrong/right direction. I say the pheasants were ‘somewhat farmed’ because they were raised from chicks in a yard opposite the field, and then released into the cornfield and fed regularly until it was shooting season (one shoot a week for 14 weeks, I believe). I was in two minds about what I was watching – on the one hand, I am vegetarian and not particularly into the idea of shooting defenceless birds as a ‘sport’, but on the other hand, I doubted I would witness such an event again for a long time, if ever – and it does seem somehow quintessentially English. (More on this in the next day’s blog!)



I ended up walking with the Leicester couple the rest of the way to Burford, which was mostly pleasant, as they had spent the past week in the area and had some good suggestions for things to see, walks to do and places to go.



We were all impressed by the iciness and wintry appearance, especially as we made our way down the gentle slope of Dean Bottom, and the old medieval church of Widford appeared to our right.



We visited the church to see the wall paintings, dated from around 1350, and looked at (but didn’t explore) the ditches and mounds that are the remains of the medieval village.



We made it back to Burford after the last bit of easy strolling along the river.



Well, it was easy apart from the slippery ice, which almost did for one of my companions a number of times! We parted ways and I walked up and down the main street, ate my little roll, and then headed back towards the cottage.



I met up with M, A, E and L near the house and showed them the footpath to Burford.



It’s a very quick walk to the main street, down through a field and then straight over the bridge. We looked in a number of shops along the street – a cosy little second-hand-antique-collectibles shop was the highlight, and I bought a country gentleman scarf from the Oxford Shirt Co.



We had lunch at the bakery, which was bustling and friendly, and the meal was filling and warming.



As it gets dark at about 4:30, there wasn’t much chance for more exploring, so we had a lovely dinner and sat around in front of the fire watching DVDs, playing sudoku, and reading until bed time. LOVELY DAY!

AMELAND: NEW YEARS EVE

We woke to a landscape made strange with a heavy frost. The ice grew like stalactites in delicate crystals off the remainder of the frost from the day before. Everything was frozen!





The ice on the irrigation channel, which had cracked under heavy use (bikes, chairs, skates, stomping, kids, adults), had refrozen. I took a few more pictures, and was joined by my aunt A for a bit.







After breakfast, Dan and I walked into the nearest village, Nes, with my aunt C and cousin L. The walk is around 2-3kms, but it took us a while because we kept stopping to take pictures!




We met my . . . great aunt (?) T on the way in, and she pointed out the Southern Wright whale jawbone and translated the information sign. In town it was too cold to do much but peek at the old buildings with dates in wrought iron on the outside (17something, 1625, 2001), laugh at the fact that the name de Jong was on the de Jong restaurant, the de Jong bottleshop, and the de Jong bakery.





We stopped in the bakery for chokalatemelk and olliebollen (Dutch new year ‘oil balls’ – a kind of doughnut), then went to the bottle shop and purchased some new year whisky (a bottle of Oban 14 years).




It seemed to be getting colder and colder, and so we set off home. Once we got out of town, we opened the whisky and had a swig to warm us up.







Just off the road was a paddock that was completely iced over, and people had been skating on it for a couple of days. This is pretty special for Holland, we’ve heard, as people haven’t been able to skate on natural ice for over a decade. We headed over for a look, and I was yet again amazed at how easy the skaters make it seem. Even the kids holding onto chairs look more coordinated than I think I’d ever look! At any rate, we went for a good long skate. C and I posed for a photo as we went around . . . heh.



That afternoon was laid back – Dan had a nap, then played with my cousins A, C and E, and I drank whisky with my cousin C standing around a little bonfire we’d made outside. Later in the afternoon, I helped out with dinner by making golden syrup dumplings (though they didn’t turn out so great because we possibly used half non-self-raising flour – we couldn’t read the packets! – and there weren’t enough eggs). Other people made more olliebollen . . . I ate so many. Erk!



It does amaze me, having lived as a vegetarian for 10 years and having a vegetarian house, that so many people base their meals around a big bit of meat with some veges. I guess it’s easier to make a huge bunch of roast chicken and a huge bunch of boiled vegies than to do a meal with all these things combined. Still, it’s kind of odd – the very different diet played havoc with my skin and gave me headaches for the first couple of days . . . or maybe that was the cold! DID I MENTION IT WAS COLD?!

I was shattered after dinner and fell asleep, but not before making Dan promise to wake me up at 10 so I could meet people and be part of the fireworks at midnight. Waking up and getting up at that time was the most difficult thing I’ve done on this trip (which is a good thing, I suppose!). We had a bit of a whisky-off between the Canadians’ Canadian Club and our Oban, chatted a bit, and then went outside at about 11:50 for a countdown and toast. People had bought masses of fireworks, and we set them off for something like half an hour – fun, and slightly scary being so close, but awesome. I’ve never been directly underneath fireworks going off before, so that was a pretty cool experience!

THE DAY OF KEEPING TO SCHEDULE

We had to be in London before 7 for the 7:30 start of the Rosh Hashanah dinner. We were aiming to get there between 6 and 6:30. We were driving from Chester to Warrington (to see DDD and have brunch), then to Birmingham (to meet WW and have lunch), then to London. We planned to spend about 2 hours at each place, and we pretty much stuck to that. We would have been home with plenty of time had it not been for roadworks on the M1 just outside London. That delayed us for about half an hour, but we were still in with time for a shower and to dress. Yay!

Anyway, we said goodbye to the lovely F and her kittehs, filled the car with petrol, and made it to Warrington almost without incident (only right at the end did Google maps stuff us around and tell us to turn right instead of left). DDD let us in to her cool apartment, where we admired her drool-worthy bookcases, and she very awesomely popped the second episode of Merlin on D's USB. I LOVE MY FELLOW FEN!



I find this picture terribly amusing - something about the border I put on it in iPhoto just makes it!



DDD took us on a grand tour of Warrington town centre (the candy! the new shopping mall! the mad hatter's tea party sculpture! the oldest building in warrington - now a goth pub!) and out to a wee cafe for a 'healthy' breakfast.



Funnily enough, this was the place that had what was some of the best tea I was served at a cafe in the UK on this trip. Yum. I then stocked up on less (or more?) 'healthy' snacks for the rest of the drive.



After a brief chat to Zaphod the hamster (SHE IS SO CUTE!), D and I said goodbye to awesomesauce DDD, hopped in the car and drove off in the pouring rain towards Birmingham. The weather up until that point had been consistently good, and the rain amused me now because WW in Birmingham had almost died laughing when I suggested it might be sunny when we visited. BUT I WAS TO BE PROVED RIGHT! Because the rain cleared after an hour, and the sun was out as we negotiated the 18023937 roundabouts, flyovers, underpasses and tunnels to get into Birmingham, where we found a parking spot and then got lost in the Bullring - a large shopping centre. But fortune prevailed, and we made it to the designating meeting point only a few minutes late. I forgot my camera, but luckily WW had her new one, and let me get snap-happy! You can see them here.

WW, who I've known online for a while, but never been able to meet IRL before, had planned out a fabulous exploratory walk around some of the canals in Birmingham (did you know it has more miles of canals than Venice? OR SO THEY SAY!). And so we grabbed a baguette and set off. Birmingham is a relatively new city by UK standards, the majority of what we know it to be today having grown up around and since the industrial revolution (WW was super informative! it was excellent! i learnt thingumies!) Thus, the architecture was far more reminiscent of Australian and Canadian cities than other old English or Scottish cities (for example). Even the churches/cathedrals were fairly 'new'.





The canals, however, are very much a UK/European fixture. I had a lot of fun looking at the undersides of bridges, and we stared for quite a while at the cool reflections of rippled sunlight playing on the curved underbelly of one tunnel.





We learnt how to sink a canal boat, and also how to operate a lock - unfortunately after one canal boater yelled at us rather aggressively to open the lock gate for her. It took us some time to work out what she wanted.





We managed to stay out of the way of the armies of pigeons, and also out of the way of most of the tories - who happened to be having some big conference in Birmingham on that day (kind of random, after the races in Chester...) They were fairly easily avoided, as they stood out a mile! We thought one of them looked particularly like Percy Weasley.




We had a pint at a lovely canal-side pub (we sat on the upstairs balcony, as far away from the tories in the bar as possible), then toddled off back to our car. WW was a really great tour guide - and very thoughtful, because she'd even done the research and knew that one side of the canal was closed off because of the conservatives (it's to keep everyone else safe, we think). I recommend her services!



And then it was just driving back to London, freshening up, meeting people, welcoming SJ and Es back from their trip to Paris (I'm envious!), and having a lovely dinner! Rather a quiet day, wouldn't you think?!